@scott. One question I do have. Are you REALLY in this for the long haul? If I rolled over on my production sites, and then CP “dropped off” net, I wouldn’t know what to do. I realize that’s a very pointed question, but feel it needs to be asked
Hi, Dick. Obviously, I’m not anyone who can answer the question, especially being so new to CP and these forums, but I would hazard a guess that even if the core founder were to say he’s had enough of this and were to walk off into the sunset, there’d probably still be a group of others who’d keep it going at this point. Just speculating here.
Also, at this point, the way I see it, we have 3 options:
- don’t update to 5.0 and keep your site alive for who knows how long until it starts getting buggy or hacked (maybe a few years?), 2) download the Classic Editor, let the updates roll in, and just see what happens, fingers crossed, or 3) use ClassicPress and as we all want, be able to get on with working on client projects and not have to worry any more and, again, do the sign of the cross that things will run smoothly and continue for at least a few years as well. We have to place our faith either in WP or CP to keep our current or older sites alive at this point and WP is not going to be backward compatible at all…and very honestly if a company is happy to ship out a buggy WP on Thanksgiving Day, and there was serous consideration of forcing updates to 5.0 at some time, it kind of wears on my trust a wee bit.
I don’t think anyone can guarantee anything, but WP has kind of put us all in a bind with the lack of backward compatibility and the Classic Editor being a deadline (which I don’t trust, honestly) and all the bugs Gutenberg is churning out regularly. The unpredictable “full speed ahead at any costs” type of project management I’m seeing from WP lately makes me feel shaky about staying with their product, honestly.
Anyway, I’ll end it there and see what others may think.
5 Likes
I definitely agree that WP isn’t to be trusted- for ANYTHING. I do have a lot of faith in the folks here at CP, and will be using it on my production sites as soon as the first RC is published. I did think it was a necessary question to ask though
1 Like
I can only speak for myself, but I have every intention on being involved for the foreseeable future. I believe in the mission, and seeing the community we are building gets me excited about the possibilities.
From what I can see with the engagement from the community, I think that if everyone on the committee were to pack up and step away tomorrow ClassicPress as a project would survive. The way we have been set up (thanks to @scott) allows for the continuation of the project should something like that happen.
Hopefully that makes sense, I am working on ~4 hours of sleep
ROCK on… I can’t do anything on the CODE side, but am already pushing this - HARD - on the PR side, i.e., FB, Twitter, etc.
3 Likes
When is the first RC scheduled? I just downloaded the migration plugin and went from there. Didn’t even know about the RC yet and I’m thinking of switching all my sites over to CP now instead of waiting because I just can’t afford to roll the dice with Gutenberg on these older sites.
I believe someone said their current target is sometime in January, 2019
I think that makes perfect sense. Get some sleep (I have untreated severe sleep apnea, so I’m very sympathetic to the need for quality sleep).
I think the safer approach until the first RC is out is to turn off auto-updates, use the “Classic Editor” plugin and stay at 4.9.8 until that first RC is released… though I DO have the BETA running on a production site that’s not the core of my business, I don’t want to roll over to CP fully until the 1st RC
From purely my own perspective, it seems fine so far. I don’t see any issues at all except for the WordFence alerts, which they already know about and make sense.My concern would be six months from now, when I’d expect plugins and themes to start getting a little wonky with trying to accommodate Gutenberg more and more. I will probably switch all my sites over to CP and stop updating Divi after a few more iterations and just leave it at that. Going forward with future clients, I would stagger development while things adapt and use CP still, since Gutenberg is (to my mind) going to be in beta mode for a long time to come.
As this question was directed specifically to me, I’ll answer from a personal viewpoint and be completely honest.
When I spoke to my mentor (who has invested in my business, Holly Social) about ClassicPress, I told him that I want ClassicPress to be my legacy. ClassicPress is not the thing that will make me wealthy (I’ve set it up as a not-for-profit after all), nor do I want it to be. Instead, it is the thing that I can look back on and say “I made the world a little bit better by doing that”.
This is driving force behind my passion for ClassicPress, and I will fight for it to be a success today, tomorrow and 20 years from now.
My vision is to find ways to fund our growth for the benefit of our users without relying on donations (and that adhere to our democratic structure). By doing this we guarantee a sustainable future without a conflict of interest.
ClassicPress is here for the long run, and although we will have some major hurdles to overcome in the coming weeks, months and years I promise you that I will give it my all.
And from a completely selfish perspective, I run 50 websites that will need ClassicPress for the foreseeable future.
16 Likes
Great to hear that. I laid your efforts and will do whatever I can to support them
You mean “laud your efforts?” Sorry, I used to be an English teacher a long time ago.
Let’s do everything we can to help you reach that worthy goal. I can come up with plenty of ideas and you are free to pick what you like and discard what you don’t.
2 Likes
And that is the best we can hope for in life. You don’t earn extra points for being the richest corpse in the cemetery. And unlike the Egyptians and their mummies, you can’t take your riches with you when you die.
At 66 years of age, I can look back on my life and see the mistakes I’ve made; the grand plans that never worked out, the projects I started and abandoned (and the people I have let down), etc, etc.
But what does last is the help I gave to people when they needed it the most. I didn’t get rich, I didn’t become famous, but I did leave some breadcrumbs along the way.
No one can see into the future and all we can do is make plans. If they work out, then good. If not, then so be it. By making CP a non-profit project, delegating responsibility and having a bottom up philosophy, Scott is showing the humility that makes great leaders. Being prepared to step back and pass the baton when the time comes, will ensure the project survives.
Empires come and go, and WP is the latest one that is teetering. Meetup made the same mistake of ignoring users this time last year, and still has a platform that is broken and stuck between the old and new one - making it virtually unusable.
There is a lot to be learned from the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” lesson. Keep it up-to-date certainly, but don’t suddenly do a 180 and expect people to stay loyal.
4 Likes
In this comment I’ll discuss longevity and long-term planning from the technical side.
ClassicPress versioning works using semver which is an industry standard that sets rules for how software can be upgraded across versions.
The main rule is that a breaking change must come in a new major version.
To put it another way: After ClassicPress v1.0.0 is released, we guarantee that your sites will continue working on any future ClassicPress releases in the v1.x series. This means full compatibility with all plugins and themes that are supported by WP 4.9.x.
We plan to support the ClassicPress v1.x release series with bugfixes and security updates for as long as people need it.
If there are potentially breaking changes in ClassicPress v2.x, we will add a new screen to the upgrade process explaining the changes very clearly and carefully. We will also do as much as possible to automatically confirm that your site can be safely upgraded to the new version.
Upgrades to a new major version which contains potentially breaking changes will always be optional and clearly communicated.
So, that’s our basic plan for backwards compatibility, which is an important part of longevity. You can stay on ClassicPress v1.x (with full plugin and theme compatibility) for as long as you need it.
Another important part of longevity is what will actually go into ClassicPress v2 and future versions.
The community is determining this via the petitions site, and we are listening. For now, the top category of petitions is “remove X feature that I don’t need”.
We can’t just remove features for everyone, as this would break sites. However, we can move things like XML-RPC out into core plugins, which are enabled by default but can be disabled and deleted.
We will be as careful as possible, but this is a major re-architecting of the ClassicPress code, so it still has the potential to break sites.
We agreed in our December 12 committee meeting that based on community feedback so far, the main goal for ClassicPress v2 will be moving older and less-wanted features out into optional core plugins.
The goals and direction for v3 will also be determined by the community. And like Scott and Wade have stated, I plan to continue contributing to ClassicPress for a long time.
8 Likes
Darn auto fill. You’re right
Truly reassuring to read all you said. You folks have already proven your commitment with the alpha and beta releases. NOTHING broke on my sites
4 Likes
I agree with you Dick. And it’s for that very reason that I think ALL OF US – and that includes busy, busy me – need to help out in any way we can. That’s what Open Source Communities are all about, relying on the energy of all. One hour a month to ten hours a month, dev work or writing, anything that one can do I bet would be appreciated and will help answer our question of “Will this live long?”
I need to spend more time looking at Dries work lifting Drupal off the ground but what I do know is that it was the excitement of innovation and imagineering that got devs and others so excited that they found the way to work on pushing Drupal forward, even with busy schedules.
What people miss when they say elsewhere “Oh just install the classic editor” is that the path here could result in a far more exciting, enterprise quality Drupal than we have ever seen before. Inside this group sits brains! All these brains imagining!! Let’s start a fire! What fun, eh?? Far more fun than just a classic editor…leading to who knows where.
I’ve been called crazy before … go ahead and do it again. Someday I’ll believe it but it’s going to take me some time.
4 Likes
The problem with “just install the Classic Editor” is logic. The Classic Editor will only be supported until 2022 or 2023. And there’s nothing written in stone that says they can’t change their minds on that or “tinker” with that Classic Editor if enough stake holders want more bodies using ol’ Gutenberg. Also, what happens when that Classic Editor is finally no longer supported or is pulled? Ooops! Didn’t think of that. Now we have all these sites with no backward compatibility and no way to go forward. The Classic Editor argument is a band-aid and a caveat rather than an actual solution.
As far as what little ol’ me can do in a sleep retirement town in Florida, to start I intend to host as many WordPress meetups as possible and put ClassicPress on each one and create websites for each meetup where I put ClassicPress in the footer and I intend to actively endorse it to all. In person, in groups, in forums. And use it on all my WP sites. If I can do more later on, I will. I’ve offered input in marketing conversations here, and if asked, will do whatever I can.
3 Likes